Another Tyrese Maxey 30-ball leads Sixers to win over Kings

The Sixers battled through fatigue in the second half of a back-to-back, scooting past the Sacramento Kings for a 117-104 win on Wednesday night. Tyrese Maxey led all scorers with 30 points, adding on four rebounds and eight assists to lead Philadelphia to their fourth-straight victory.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— It would have been greedy to expect Tyrese Maxey to replicate his near-perfect outing against the Lakers a night prior. This was always destined to be an accumulation game, where efficiency takes a backseat as you battle fatigue on a back-to-back. Give me the desire and the raw numbers, and I can live with that.

For a bit, it looked like Maxey might not get there on the volume, either. He had seven points on seven shots at one point in the first half, and the Kings sent frequent doubles and traps at him to get it out of his hands. The exchanges were a little clunkier than the night prior, leaving less time for Maxey to get back to the ball, and less time to get into his bag as a scorer. So he had to try to punish Sacramento in every scramble situation, every fast break, every early offense opening. And eventually, he broke through.

Maxey wasn’t the same free-throw machine he was against L.A., but he played through some tough contact in the paint, scoring an and-one layup and another bucket or two in the first half that hardly even looked like shot attempts. It doesn’t need to look pretty to count for two points, of course, and his perseverance allowed him to keep Philly out in front after 24 minutes.

When the Kings felt like they were about to pull away for good in the third quarter, it was Maxey who put a big run to an end, scoring a layup through contact on a run out and bringing the game to a stop. Philadelphia would find their footing after that moment, running some solid zone offense to scratch and claw their way back from a double-digit deficit.

As a playmaker, he kept things fairly simple at all times, building on a concept Nurse talked about following Tuesday’s win. When he trusts his reads and allows his teammates to make plays, it all comes back to him eventually. He left a big imprint on the game without trying to bulldoze his way through double coverage, and it’s a big reason they’re now riding high on four straight wins.

And then, well, he did bulldoze through coverage a few times in the final minutes of the game. When it was closing time, the closer stood up and took control of the game, scoring a few big buckets by leaving the likes of Malik Monk and Keegan Murray in his dust. He is on a spectacular run right now, and we’ll see tomorrow night if it earned him the second All-Star nod of his career.

— I have been a vocal critic of every guard not named Maxey or Jared McCain this season, desperate for the Sixers to upgrade the spot behind their star guard so he doesn’t have to play 40 minutes every night. Credit to the Kyle Lowry/Reggie Jackson combo for giving them some needed juice off of the bench.

This was one of the most quintessential Lowry games we’ve seen since he put on a Sixers uniform for the first time. He snuck in for an offensive rebound on a missed free throw, attempted to take charges, hit a pull-up three, made a beautiful outlet pass for a Ricky Council IV dunk, and generally did everything he could to annoy the hell out of Sacramento. He was all over the box score, and he moved as well as I can remember this season. Perhaps he has finally shaken off the effects of the hip issue that kept him out of the lineup for a bit. Either way, he played some pesky defense against old running mate DeMar DeRozan, who struggled mightily to find his touch on Wednesday.

Jackson, on the other hand, was all on-ball creation all of the time. He still has some wiggle left in year 14, and he used it to get to the rim and put pressure on the Kings’ defense, mostly to hunt his own shot but occasionally to fire a drive-and-kick pass out to a corner shooter. Any bit of positive play from the old guards is relished around these parts, and they couldn’t have picked a better night to show off.

(For whatever it’s worth, the Jackson/Lowry combo minutes have gone pretty well for Philly this year, even if it’s a limited sample and even if I think that’s the sort of pairing that simply won’t work against legitimate teams. It has worked so far, and that can be celebrated, I think?)

— Eric Gordon is quickly becoming one of the faces of Philadelphia’s recent turnaround, finding his shooting boots at the right time to either save the season or punch his ticket out of here at the deadline. He has looked like the exact player Daryl Morey’s front office hoped they were getting last summer, a dark horse candidate to start even when the full squad is healthy.

It is hard to overstate how much spacing he provides with his affinity for deep catch-and-shoot jumpers. The Sixers’ Spectrum logo at center court is admittedly a pretty big one, but he took a logo catch-and-shoot three at one point in the first half, making it look effortless as he splashed down from the orange piece of the logo. Look at how far away Devin Carter is on this shot, there’s just no way to reasonably contest this:

Philadelphia has been starved for shooting for most of this season, and Gordon’s production in a temporary starting role has brought his own numbers over the 40-percent threshold, making up for inconsistent shooting from the likes of Kelly Oubre, Caleb Martin, and other staple rotation guys. He has supplemented the outside touch with some pretty good work all over the floor, too, supplying the Sixers with secondary playmaking from the two-guard spot and handsy defense with the occasional forced turnover.

The best part is that he fits with any version of the team you’d put on the floor, and should continue to cook if/when Joel Embiid is back on the floor commanding double teams. He will cool off eventually, but ride the hot hand for now.

— Justin Edwards played his way into everyone’s good graces with three-point shooting on the wing. He might keep himself there with timely off-ball movement, and he looks like a player slowly beginning to find his place in the offense.

The shot remains the main attraction, and Edwards’ three from the left wing in the first half was a thing of beauty. Walking the tightrope along the sideline, coming around a screen and hitting a quick-trigger three without stepping out of bounds is a lot harder than it looks.

Anyway, Edwards looks like he’s finding his place as a cutter off of his more ball-dominant teammates. He might not have the top-end athleticism of Oubre to punch on people in traffic, but he’s got more than enough size and hops to pick up some free points every game by sneaking behind the defense.

— Ricky Council IV has had an excellent start to the week, and I’m curious if Nurse will show enough trust in him to play him this weekend when (hopefully) they get some lineup reinforcements. He has cut down on a lot of the nonsense and focused on the simple things that help his team out: running the floor hard, taking only open threes, and leveraging his strength as a downhill driver.

A rotation player is in there if he can tighten some things up.

The Bad

— I spent probably 2,000 words on Guerschon Yabusele as a trade candidate today, talking up his present-day value to the Sixers as they consider what they do with him over the next eight days. He proceeded to look dead on his feet for most of his minutes against the Kings, no real shock for a guy who has been nursing a banged-up knee for the last week or so.

Yabusele got to all of his usual spots and even had a nice offensive stretch in the middle of the third quarter, but this was an ineffective night for him. His limitations protecting the rim really show up when he’s half a step slow with his rotations.

The Ugly

— There are a lot of different issues facing the NBA in the competition for eyeballs and TV ratings, but the impact of back-to-back games on product quality is a huge deal. I think this was a relatively good showing for the Sixers after playing the night before, and it was still hard to avoid seeing it on both ends of the floor.

On offense, the Sixers missed a lot of cheapies in the first half, with players of all kinds missing layups and short jumpers repeatedly. It’s a testament to their execution that they were able to put up a fight and score fairly consistently anyway, but they could have had a pretty comfortable lead at halftime in what we’ll call “normal” circumstances.

I thought the problem was often more pronounced on defense, or in trying to turn successful defensive possessions into fast breaks the other way. Kelly Oubre isn’t exactly Magic Johnson as a passer, but on a turnover he threw following a Sixers stop, you could see his body language shift the second the ball left his hands, his mind catching up to his actions at the last second. You could see guys loading up to slide into position, only to feel their bodies disagree with the decision, turning it into weak reaches into space as the Kings drove past them to the rim. Whether it was physical or mental, there was definitely fatigue on display, from everybody except for the lightly used young players.

10-minute quarters? Beat it, Adam Silver. Cut down the schedule and then come talk to me.

— Adem Bona’s attempted dunk midway through the second quarter is easily one of the funniest plays of the year. I’m not sure a defender has ever been more set before taking a charge, and Bona basically hit him with a flying knee in the process of trying to throw it down. Unbelievable moment.